Philip had not been a success at school; he had narrowly escaped being a failure. During his earlier years he had shown industry without gifts; during his later years he had shown gifts without industry. His childish saying became his by-word, and half in sport, half in earnest, with a smile on his lips, and a shuddering sense of fascination, he would say when the wind freshened, “The sea's calling me, I must be off.” The blood of the old sea-dog, his mother's father, was strong in him. Idleness led to disaster, and disaster to some disgrace. He was indifferent to both while at school, but shame found him out at home.
“You'll be sixteen for spring,” said Auntie Nan, “and what would your poor father say if he were alive? He thought worlds of his boy, and always said what a man he would be some day.”
That was the shaft that found Philip. The one passion that burned in his heart like a fire was reverence for the name and the will of his dead father. The big hopes of the broken man had sometimes come as a torture to the boy when the blood of the old salt was rioting within him. But now they came as a spur.
Philip went back to school and worked like a slave. There were only three terms left, and it was too late for high honours, but the boy did wonders. He came out well, and the masters were astonished. “After all,” they said, “there's no denying it, the boy Christian must have the gift of genius. There's nothing he might not do.”
If Phil had much of the blood of Captain Billy, Pete had much of the blood of Black Tom. After leaving the mill at Sulby, Pete made his home in the cabin of the smack. What he was to eat, and how he was to be clothed, and where he was to be lodged when the cold nights came, never troubled his mind for an instant. He had fine times with his partner. The terms of their partnership were simple. Phil took the fun and made Pete take the fish. They were a pair of happy-go-lucky lads, and they looked to the future with cheerful faces.
There was one shadow over their content, and that was the ghost of a gleam of sunshine. It made daylight between them, though, day by day as they ran together like two that run a race. The prize was Katherine Cregeen. Pete talked of her till Phil's heart awoke and trembled; but Phil hardly knew it was so, and Pete never once suspected it. Neither confessed to the other, and the shifts of both to hide the secret of each were boyish and beautiful.
There is a river famous for trout that rises in Sulby glen and flows into Ramsey harbour. One of the little attempts of the two lads to deceive each other was to make believe that it was their duty to fish this river with the rod, and so wander away singly up the banks of the stream until they came to “The Manx Fairy,” and then drop in casually to quench the thirst of so much angling. Towards the dusk of evening Philip, in a tall silk hat over a jacket and knickerbockers, would come upon Pete by the Sulby bridge, washed, combed, and in a collar. Then there would be looks of great surprise on both sides. “What, Phil! Is it yourself, though? Just thought I'd see if the trouts were biting to-night. Dear me, this is Sulby too! And bless my soul, 'The Fairy' again I Well, a drop of drink will do no harm. Shall we put a sight on them inside, eh?” After that prelude they would go into the house together.
This little comedy was acted every night for weeks. It was acted on Hollantide Eve six months after Pete had been turned out by Cæsar. Grannie was sitting by the glass partition, knitting at intervals, serving at the counter occasionally and scoring up on a black board that was a mass of chalk hieroglyphics. Cæsar himself in ponderous spectacles and with a big book in his hands was sitting in the kitchen behind with his back to the glass, so as to make the lamp of the business serve also for his studies. On a bench in the bar sat Black Tom, smoking, spitting, scraping his feet on the sanded floor, and looking like a gigantic spider with enormous bald head. At his side was a thin man with a face pitted by smallpox, and a forehead covered with strange protuberances. This was Jonaique Jelly, barber, clock-mender, and Manx patriot. The postman was there, too, Kelly the Thief, a tiny creature with twinkling ferret eyes, and a face that had a settled look of age, as of one born old, being wrinkled in squares like the pointing of a cobble wall.
At sight of Pete, Grannie made way, and he pushed through to the kitchen, where he seated himself in a seat in the fireplace just in front of the peat closet, and under the fish hanging to smoke. At sight of Phil she dropped her needles, smoothed her front hair, rose in spite of protest, and wiped down a chair by the ingle. Cæsar eyed Pete in silence from between the top rim of his spectacles and the bottom edge of the big book; but as Philip entered he lowered the book and welcomed him. Nancy Joe was coming and going in her clogs like a rip-rap let loose between the dairy and a pot of potatoes in their jackets which swung from the slowrie, the hook over the fire. A moment later Kate came flitting through the half-lit kitchen, her black eyes dancing and her mouth rippling in smiles. She courtesied to Philip, grimaced at Pete, and disappeared.
Then from the other side of the glass partition came the husky voice of the postman, saying, “Well, I must be taking the road, gentlemen. There's Manx ones starting for Kim-berley by the early sailing to-morrow morning.”
And then came the voice of the barber in a hoarse falsetto: “Kimberley! That's the place for good men I'm always saying. There's Billy the Red back home with a fortune. And ould Corlett—look at ould Corlett, the Ballabeg! Five years away at the diggings, and left a house worth twenty pounds per year per annum, not to spake of other hereditaments.”
After that the rasping voice of Black Tom, in a tone of irony and contempt: “Of coorse, aw, yes, of coorse, there's goold on the cushags there, they're telling me. But I thought you were a man that's all for the island, Mr. Jelly.”
“Lave me alone for that,” said the voice of the barber. “Manx-land for the Manx-man—that's the text I'm houlding to. But what's it saying, 'Custom must be indulged with custom, or custom will die?' And with these English scouring over it like puffins on the Calf, it isn't much that's left of the ould island but the name. The best of the Manx boys are going away foreign, same as these ones.”
“Well, I've letters for them to the packet-office anyway,” said the postman.
“Who are they, Mr. Kelly?” called Philip, through the doorway.
“Some of the Quarks ones from Glen Rushen, sir, and the Gills boys from Castletown over. Good-night all, goodnight!”
The door closed behind the postman, and Black Tom growled, “Slips of lads—I know them.”
“Smart though, smart uncommon,” said the barber; “that's the only sort they're wanting out yonder.”
There was a contemptuous snort. “So? You'd better go to Kimberley yourself, then.”
“Turn the clock back a piece and I'll start before you've time to curl your hair,” said the barber.
Black Tom was lifting his pot. “That's the one thing,” said he, “the Almighty Himself” (gulp, gulp) “can't do.”
“Which?” tittered the barber.
“Both,” said Black Tom, scratching his big head, as bald as a bladder.
Cæsar flashed about with his face to the glass partition. “You're like the rest of the infidels, sir,” said he, “only spaking to contradick yourself—calling God the Almighty, and telling in the same breath of something He can't do.”
Meanwhile an encounter of another sort was going on at the ingle. Kate had re-appeared with a table fork which she used at intervals to test the boiling of the potatoes. At each approach to the fire she passed close to where Pete sat, never looking at Phil above the level of his boots. And as often as she bent over the pot, Pete put his arm round her waist, being so near and so tempting. For thus pestering her she beat her foot like a goat, and screwed on a look of anger which broke down in a stifled laugh; but she always took care to come again to Pete's side rather than to Phil's, until at last the nudging and shoving ended in a pinch and a little squeal, and a quick cry of “What's that?” from Cæsar.
Kate vanished like a flash, the dim room began to frown again, and Phil to draw his breath heavily, when the girl came back as suddenly bringing an apple and a length of string. Mounting a chair, she fixed one end of the string to the lath of the ceiling by the peck, the parchment oatcake pan, and the other end she tied to the stalk of the apple.
“What's the jeel now?” said Pete.
“Fancy! Don't you know? Not heard f'Hop-tu-naa'? It's Hollantide Eve, man,” said Kate.
Then setting the string going like a pendulum, she stood back a pace with hands clasped behind her, and snapped at the apple as it swung, sometimes catching it, sometimes missing it, sometimes marking it, sometimes biting it, her body bending and rising with its waggle, and nod, and bob, her mouth opening and closing, her white teeth gleaming, and her whole face bubbling over with delight. At every touch the speed increased, and the laughter grew louder as the apple went faster. Everybody, except the miller, joined in the fun. Phil cried out on the girl to look to her teeth, but Pete egged her on to test the strength of them.
“Snap at it, Kitty!” cried Pete. “Aw, lost! Lost again! Ow! One in the cheek! No matter! Done!”
And Black Tom and Mr. Jelly stood up to watch through the doorway. “My goodness grayshers!” cried one. “What a mouthful!” said the other. “Share it, Kitty, woman; aw, share and share alike, you know.”
But then came the thunderous tones of Cæsar. “Drop it, drop it! Such practices is nothing but Popery.”
“Popery!” cried Black Tom from over the counter. “Chut! nonsense, man! The like of it was going before St. Patrick was born.”
Kate was puffing and panting and taking down the pendulum.
“What does it mean then, Tom?” she said; “it's you for knowing things.”
“Mane? It manes fairies!”
“Fairies!”
Black Tom sat down with a complacent air, and his rasping voice came from the other side of the glass. “In the ould times gone by, girl, before Manxmen got too big for their breeches, they'd be off to bed by ten o'clock on Hollantide Eve to lave room for the little people that's outside to come in. And the big woman of the house would be filling the crocks for the fairies to drink, and the big man himself would be raking the ashes so they might bake their cakes, and a girl, same as you, would be going to bed backwards——”
“I know! I know!” cried Kate, near to the ceiling, and clapping her hands. “She eats a roasted apple, and goes to bed thirsty, and then dreams that somebody brings her a drink of water, and that's the one that's to be her husband, eh?”
“You've got it, girl.”
Cæsar had been listening with his eyes turned sideways off his book, and now he cried, “Then drop it, I'm telling you. It's nothing but instruments of Satan, and the ones that's telling it are just flying in the face of faith from superstition and contrariety. It isn't dacent in a Christian public-house, and I'm for having no more of it.”
Grannie paused in her knitting, fixed her cap with one of her needles and said, “Dear heart, father! Tom meant no harm.” Then, glancing at the clock and rising, “But it's time to shut up the house, anyway. Good night, Tom! Good night all! Good night!”
Phil and Pete rose also. Pete went to the door and pretended to look out, then came back to Kate's side and whispered, “Come, give them the slip—there's somebody outside that's waiting for you.”
“Let them wait,” said the girl, but she laughed, and Pete knew she would come. Then he turned to Philip, “A word in your ear, Phil,” he said, and took him by the arm and drew him out of the house and round to the yard of the stable.
“Well, good night, Grannie,” said Mr. Jelly, going out behind them. “But if I were as young as your grandson there, Mr. Quilliam, I would be making a start for somewhere.”
“Grandson!” grunted Tom, heaving up, “I've got no grandson, or he wouldn't be laving me to smoke a dry pipe. But he's making an Almighty of this Phil Christian—that's it.”
After they were gone, Grannie began counting the till and saying, “As for fairies—one, two, three—it may be, as Cæsar says—four—five—the like isn't in, but it's safer to be civil to them anyway.”
“Aw, yes,” said Nancy Joe, “a crock of fresh water and a few good words going to bed on Hollantide Eve does no harm at all, at all.”
Outside in the stable-yard the feet of Black Tom and Jonaique Jelly were heard going off on the road. The late moon was hanging low, red as an evening sun, over the hill to the south-east. Pete was puffing and blowing as if he had been running a race. “Quick, boy, quick!” he was whispering, “Kate's coming. A word in your ear first. Will you do me a turn, Phil?”
“What is it?” said Philip.
“Spake to the ould man for me while I spake to the girl!”
“What about?” said Philip.
But Pete could hear, nothing except his own voice. “The ould angel herself, she's all right, but the ould man's hard. Spake for me, Phil; you've got the fine English tongue at you.”
“But what about?” Philip said again.
“Say I may be a bit of a rip, but I'm not such a bad sort anyway. Make me out a taste, Phil, and praise me up. Say I'll be as good as goold; yes, will I though. Tell him he has only to say yes, and I'll be that studdy and willing and hardworking and persevering you never seen.”
“But, Pete, Pete, Pete, whatever am I to say all this about?”
Pete's puffing and panting ceased. “What about? Why, about the girl for sure.”
“The girl!” said Philip.
“What else?” said Pete.
“Kate? Am I to speak for you to the father for Kate?”
Philip's voice seemed to come up from the bottom depths of his throat.
“Are you thinking hard of the job, Phil?”
There was a moment's silence. The blood had rushed to Philip's face, which was full of strange matter, but the darkness concealed it.
“I didn't say that,” he faltered.
Pete mistook Philip's hesitation for a silent commentary on his own unworthiness. “I know I'm only a sort of a waistrel,” he said, “but, Phil, the way I'm loving that girl it's shocking. I can never take rest for thinking of her. No, I'm not sleeping at night nor working reg'lar in the day neither. Everything is telling of her, and everything is shouting her name. It's 'Kate' in the sea, and 'Kate' in the river, and the trees and the gorse. 'Kate,' 'Kate,' 'Kate,' it's Kate constant, and I can't stand much more of it. I'm loving the girl scandalous, that's the truth, Phil.”
Pete paused, but Philip gave no sign.
“It's hard to praise me, that's sarten sure,” said Pete, “but I've known her since she was a little small thing in pinafores, and I was a slip of a big boy, and went into trousers, and we played Blondin in the glen together.”
Still Philip did not speak. He was gripping the stable-wall with his trembling fingers, and struggling for composure. Pete scraped the paving-stones at his feet, and mumbled again in a voice that was near to breaking. “Spake for me, Phil. It's you to do it. You've the way of saying things, and making them out to look something. It would be clane ruined in a jiffy if I did it for myself. Spake for me, boy, now won't you, now?”
Still Philip was silent. He was doing his best to swallow a lump in his throat. His heart had begun to know itself. In the light of Pete's confession he had read his own secret. To give the girl up was one thing; it was another to plead for her for Pete. But Pete's trouble touched him. The lump at his throat went down, and the fingers on the wall slacked away. “I'll do it,” he said, only his voice was like a sob.
Then he tried to go off hastily that he might hide the emotion that came over him like a flood that had broken its dam. But Pete gripped him by the shoulder, and peered into his face in the dark. “You will, though,” said Pete, with a little shout of joy; “then it's as good as done; God bless you, old fellow.”
Philip began to roll about. “Tut, it's nothing,” he said, with a stout heart, and then he laughed a laugh with a cry in it. He could have said no more without breaking down; but just then a flash of light fell on them from the house, and a hushed voice cried, “Pete!”
“It's herself,” whispered Pete. “She's coming! She's here!”
Philip turned, and saw Kate in the doorway of the dairy, the sweet young figure framed like a silhouette by the light behind.
“I'm going!” said Philip, and he edged up to the house as the girl stepped out.
Pete followed him a step or two in approaching Kate. “Whist, man!” he whispered. “Tell the old geezer I'll be going to chapel reglar early tides and late shifts, and Sunday-school constant. And, whist! tell him I'm larning myself to play on the harmonia.”
Then Philip slithered softly through the dairy door, and shut it after him, leaving Kate and Pete together.
The kitchen of “The Manx Fairy” was now savoury with the odour of herrings roasting in their own brine, and musical with the crackling and frizzling of the oil as it dropped into the fire.
“It's a long way back to Ballure, Mrs. Cregeen,” said Philip, popping his head in at the door jamb. “May I stay to a bite of supper?”
“Aw, stay and welcome,” said Cæsar, putting down the big book, and Nancy Joe said the same, dropping her high-pitched voice perceptibly, and Grannie said, also, “Right welcome, sir, if you'll not be thinking mane to take pot luck with us. Potatoes and herrings, Mr. Christian; just a Manxman's supper. Lift the pot off the slowrie, Nancy.”
“Well, and isn't he a Manxman himself, mother?” said Cæsar.
“Of course I am, Mr. Cregeen,” said Philip, laughing noisily. “If I'm not, who should be, eh?'”
“And Manxman or no Manxman, what for should he turn up his nose at herrings same as these?” said Nancy Joe. She was dishing up a bowlful. “Where'll he get the like of them? Not in England over, I'll go bail.”
“Indeed, no, Nancy,” said Philip, still laughing needlessly.
“And if they had them there, the poor, useless creatures would be lost to cook them.”
“'Deed, would they, Nancy,” said Grannie. She was rolling the potatoes into a heap on to the bare table. “And we've much to be thankful for, with potatoes and herrings three times a day; but we shouldn't be thinking proud of our-selves for that.”
“Ask the gentleman to draw up, mother,” said Cæsar.
“Draw up, sir, draw up. Here's your bowl of butter-milk. A knife and fork, Nancy. We're no people for knife and fork to a herring, sir. And a plate for Mr. Christian, woman; a gentleman usually likes a plate. Now ate, sir, ate and welcome—but where's your friend, though?”
“Pete! oh! he's not far off.” Saying this, Philip interrupted his laughter to distribute sage winks between Nancy Joe and Grannie.
Cæsar looked around with a potato half peeled in his fingers. “And the girl—where's Kate?” he asked.
“She's not far off neither,” said Philip, still winking vigorously. “But don't trouble about them, Mr. Cregeen. They'll want no supper. They're feeding on sweeter things than herrings even.” Saying this he swallowed a gulp with another laugh.
Cæsar lifted his head with a pinch of his herring between finger and thumb half way to his open mouth. “Were you spaking, sir?” he said.
At that Philip laughed immoderately. It was a relief to drown with laughter the riot going on within.
“Aw, dear, what's agate of the boy?” thought Grannie.
“Is it a dog bite that's working on him?” thought Nancy.
“Speaking!” cried Philip, “of course I'm speaking. I've come in to do it, Mr. Cregeen—I've come in to speak for Pete. He's fond of your daughter, Cæsar, and wants your good-will to marry her.”
“Lord-a-massy!” cried Nancy Joe.
“Dear heart alive!” muttered Grannie.
“Peter Quilliam!” said Cæsar, “did you say Peter?”
“I did, Mr. Cregeen, Peter Quilliam,” said Philip stoutly, “my friend Pete, a rough fellow, perhaps, and without much education, but the best-hearted lad in the island. Come now, Cæsar, say the word, sir, and make the young people happy.”
He almost foundered over that last word, but Cæsar kept him up with a searching look.
“Why, I picked him out of the streets, as you might say,” said Cæsar.
“So you did, Mr. Cregeen, so you did. I always thought you were a discerning man, Cæsar. What do you say, Grannie? It's Cæsar for knowing a deserving lad when he sees one, eh?”
He gave another round of his cunning winks, and Grannie replied, “Aw, well, it's nothing against either of them anyway.”
Cæsar was gitting as straight as a crowbar and as grim as a gannet. “And when he left me, he gave me imperence and disrespeck.”
“But the lad meant no harm, father,” said Grannie; “and hadn't you told him to take to the road?”
“Let every bird hatch its own eggs, mother; it'll become you better,” said Cæsar. “Yes, sir, the lip of Satan and the imperence of sin.”
“Pete!” cried Philip, in a tone of incredulity; “why, he hasn't a thought about you that isn't out of the Prayer-book.”
Cæsar snorted. “No? Then maybe that's where he's going for his curses.”
“No curses at all,” said Nancy Joe, from the side of the table, “but a right good lad though, and you've never had another that's been a patch on him.”
Cæsar screwed round to her and said severely, “Where there's geese there's dirt, and where there's women there's talking.” Then turning back to Philip, he said in a tone of mock deference, “And may I presume, sir—a little question—being a thing like that's general understood—what's his fortune?”
Philip fell back in his chair. “Fortune? Well, I didn't think that you now——”
“No?” said Cæsar. “We're not children of Israel in the wilderness getting manna dropped from heaven twice a day. If it's only potatoes and herrings itself, we're wanting it three times, you see.”
Do what he would to crush it, Philip could not help feeling a sense of relief. Fate was interfering; the girl was not for Pete. For the first moment since he returned to the kitchen he breathed freely and fully. But then came the prick of conscience: he had come to plead for Pete, and he must be loyal; he must not yield; he must exhaust all his resources of argument and persuasion. The wild idea occurred to him to take Cæsar by force of the Bible.
“But think what the old book says, Mr. Cregeen, 'take no thought for the morrow'——”
“That's what Johnny Niplightly said, Mr. Christian, when he lit my kiln overnight and burnt my oats before morning.”.
“'But consider the lilies'——”
“I have considered them, sir; but I'm foiling still and mother has to spin.”
“And isn't Pete able to toil, too,” said Philip boldly. “Nobody better in the island; there's not a lazy bone in his body, and he'll earn his living anywhere.”
“Whatishis living, sir?” said Cæsar.
Philip halted for an answer, and then said, “Well, he's only with me in the boat at present, Mr. Cregeen.”
“And what's he getting? His meat and drink and a bit of pence, eh? And you'll be selling up some day, it's like, and going away to England over, and then where is he? Let the girl marry a mother-naked man at once.”
“But you're wanting help yourself, father,” said Grannie. “Yes, you are though, and time for chapel too and aisément in your old days——”
“Give the lad my mill as well as my daughter, is that it, eh?” said Cæsar. “No, I'm not such a goose as yonder, either. I could get heirs, sir, heirs, bless ye—fifty acres and better, not to spake of the bas'es. But I can do without them. The Lord's blest me with enough. I'm not for daubing grease on the tail of the fat pig.”
“Just so, Cæsar,” said Philip, “just so; you can afford to take a poor man for your son-in-law, and there's Pete——”
“I'd be badly in want of a bird, though, to give a groat for an owl,” said Cæsar.
“The lad means well, anyway,” said Grannie; “and he was that good to his mother, poor thing—it was wonderful.”
“I knew the woman,” said Cæsar; “I broke a sod of her grave myself. A brand plucked from the burning, but not a straight walker in this life. And what is the lad himself? A monument of sin without a name. A bastard, what else? And that's not the port I'm sailing for.”
Down to this point Philip had been torn by conflicting feelings. He was no match for Cæsar in worldly logic, or at fencing with texts of Scripture. The devil had been whispering at his ear, “Let it alone, you'd better.” But his time had come at length to conquer both himself and Cæsar. Rising to his feet at Cæsar's last word, he cried in a voice of wrath, “What? You call yourself a Christian man, and punish the child for the sin of the parent! No name, indeed! Let me tell you, Mr. Cæsar Cregeen, it's possible to have one name in heaven that's worse than none at all on earth, and that's the name of a hypocrite.”
So saying he threw back his chair, and was making for the door, when Cæsar rose and said softly, “Come into the bar and have something.” Then, looking back at Philip's plate, he forced a laugh, and said, “But you've turned over your herring, sir—that's bad luck.” And, putting a hand on Philip's shoulder, he added, in a lower tone, “No disrespeck to you, sir; and no harm to the lad, but take my word for it, Mr. Christian, if there's an amble in the mare it'll be in the colt.”
Philip went off without another word. The moon was rising and whitening as he stepped from the door. Outside the porch a figure flitted past him in the uncertain shadows with a merry trill of mischievous laughter. He found Pete in the road, puffing and blowing as before, but from a different cause.
“The living devil's in the girl for sartin,” said Pete; “I can't get my answer out of her either way.” He had been chasing her for his answer, and she had escaped him through a gate. “But what luck with the ould man, Phil?”
Then Phil told him of the failure of his mission—told him plainly and fully but tenderly, softening the hard sayings but revealing the whole truth. As he did so he was conscious that he was not feeling like one who brings bad news. He knew that his mouth in the darkness was screwed up into an ugly smile, and, do what he would; he could not make it straight and sorrowful.
The happy laughter died off Pete's, lips, and he listened at first in silence, and afterwards with low growls. When Phil showed him how his poverty was his calamity he said, “Ay, ay, I'm only a wooden-spoon man.” When Phil told him how Cæsar had ripped up their old dead quarrel he muttered, “I'm on the ebby tide, Phil, that's it.” And when Phil hinted at what Cæsar had said of his mother and of the impediment of his own birth, a growl came up from the very depths of him, and he scraped the stones under his feet and said, “He shall repent it yet; yes, shall he.”
“Come, don't take it so much to heart—it's miserable to bring you such bad news,” said Phil; but he knew the sickly smile was on his lips still, and he hated himself for the sound of his own voice.
Pete found no hollow ring in it. “God bless you, Phil,” he said; “you've done the best for me, I know that. My pocket's as low as my heart, and it isn't fair to the girl, or I shouldn't be asking the ould man's lave anyway.”
He stood a moment in silence, crunching the wooden laths of the garden fence like matchwood in his fingers, and then said, with sudden resolution, “I know what I'll do.”
“What's that?” said Philip.. “I'll go abroad; I'll go to Kimberley.”
“Never!”
“Yes, will I though, and quick too. You heard what the men were saying in the evening—there's Manx ones going by the boat in the morning? Well, I'll go with them.”
“And you talk of being low in your pocket,” said Phil. “Why, it will take all you've got, man.”
“And more, too,” said Pete, “but you'll lend me the lave of the passage-money. That's getting into debt, but no matter. When a man falls into the water he needn't mind the rain. I'll make good money out yonder.”
A light had appeared at the window of an upper room, and Pete shook his clenched fist at it and cried, “Good-bye, Master Cregeen. I'll put worlds between us. You were my master once, but nobody made you my master for ever—neither you nor no man.”
All this time Philip knew that hell was in his heart. The hand that had let him loose when his anger got the better of him with Cæsar was clutching at him again. Some evil voice at his ear was whispering, “Let him go; lend him the money.”
“Come on, Pete,” he faltered, “and don't talk nonsense!”
But Pete heard nothing. He had taken a few steps forward, as far as to the stable-yard, and was watching the light in the house. It was moving from window to window of the dark wall. “She's taking the father's candle,” he muttered. “She's there,” he said softly. “No, she has gone. She's coming back though.” He lifted the stocking cap from his head and fumbled it in his hands. “God bless her,” he murmured. He sank to his knees on the ground. “And take care of her while I'm away.”
The moon had come up in her whiteness behind, and all was quiet and solemn around. Philip fell back and turned away his face.
When Cæsar came in after seeing Philip to the door, he said, “Not a word of this to the girl. You that are women are like pigs—we've got to pull the way we don't want you.”
On that Kate herself came in, blushing a good deal, and fussing about with great vigour. “Are you talking of the piggies, father?” she said artfully. “How tiresome they are, to be sure! They came out into the yard when the moon rose and I had such work to get them back.”
Cæsar snorted a little, and gave the signal for bed. “Fairies indeed!” he said, in a tone of vast contempt, going to the corner to wind the clock. “Just wakeness of faith,” he said over the clank of the chain as the weights rose; “and no trust in God neither,” he added, and then the clock struck ten.
Grannie had lit two candles—one for herself and her husband, the other for Nancy Joe. Nancy had slyly filled three earthenware crocks with water from the well, and had set them on the table, mumbling something about the kettle and the morning. And Cæsar himself, pretending not to see anything, and muttering dark words about waste, went from the clock to the hearth, and raked out the hot ashes to a flat surface, on which you might have laid a girdle for baking cakes.
“Good-night, Nancy,” called Grannie, from half-way up the stairs, and Cæsar, with his head down, followed grumbling. Nancy went off next, and then Kate was left alone. She had to put out the lamp and wait for her father's candle.
When the lamp was gone the girl was in the dark, save for the dim light of the smouldering fire. She began to tremble and to laugh in a whisper. Her eyes danced in the red glow of the dying turf. She slipped off her shoes and went to a closet in the wall. There she picked an apple out of a barrel, and brought it to the fire and roasted it. Then, down on her knees before the hearth, she took took two pinches of the apple and swallowed them. After that and a little shudder she rose again, and turned about to go to bed, backwards, slowly, tremblingly, with measured steps, feeling her way past the furniture, having a shock when she touched anything, and laughing to herself, nervously, when she remembered what it was.
At the door of her father's room and Grannie's she called, with a quaver in her voice, and a sleepy grunt came out to her. She reached one hand through the door, which was ajar, and took the burning candle. Then she blew out the light with a trembling puff, that had to be twice repeated, and made for her own bedroom, still going backwards.
It was a sweet little chamber over the dairy, smelling of new milk and ripe apples, and very dainty in dimity and muslin. Two tiny windows looked out from it, one on to the stable-yard and the other on to the orchard. The late moon came through the orchard window, over the heads of the dwarf trees, and the little white place was lit up from the floor to the sloping thatch.
Kate went backwards as far as to the bed, and sat down on it She fancied she heard a step in the yard, but the yard window was at her back, and she would not look behind. She listened, but heard nothing more except a see-sawing noise from the stable, where the mare was running her rope in the manger ring. Nothing but this and the cheep-cheep of a mouse that was gnawing the wood somewhere in the floor.
“Will he come?” she asked herself.
She rose and loosened her gown, and as it fell to her feet she laughed.
“Which will it be, I wonder—which?” she whispered.
The moonlight had crept up to the foot of the bed, and now lay on it like a broad blue sword speckled as with rust by the patchwork counterpane.
She freed her hair from its red ribbon, and it fell in a shower about her face. All around her seemed hushed and awful. She shuddered again, and with a back ward hand drew down the sheets. Then she took a long, deep breath, like a sigh that is half a smile, and lay down to sleep.
Somewhere towards the dawn, in the vague shadow-land between a dream and the awakening, Kate thought she was startled by a handful of rice thrown at her carriage on her marriage morning. The rattle came again, and then she knew it was from gravel dashed at her bedroom window. As she recognised the sound, a voice came as through a cavern, crying, “Kate!” She was fully awake by this time. “Then it's to be Pete,” she thought. “It's bound to be Pete, it's like,” she told herself. “It's himself outside, anyway.”
It was Pete indeed. He was standing in the thin darkness under the window, calling the girl's name out of the back of his throat, and whistling to her in a sort of whisper. Presently he heard a movement inside the room, and he said over his shoulder, “She's coming.”
There was the click of a latch and the slithering of a sash, and then out through the little dark frame came a head like a picture, with a face all laughter, crowned by a cataract of streaming black hair, and rounded off at the throat by a shadowy hint of the white frills of a night-dress.
“Kate,” said Pete again.
She pretended to have come to the window merely to look out, and, like a true woman, she made a little start at the sound of his voice, and a little cry of dismay at the idea that he was so close beneath and had taken her unawares. Then she peered down into the gloom and said, in a tone of wondrous surprise, “It must be Pete, surely.”
“And so it is, Kate,” said Pete, “and he couldn't take rest without spaking to you once again.”
“Ah!” she said, looking back and covering her eyes, and thinking of Black Tom and the fairies. But suddenly the mischief of her sex came dancing into her blood, and she could not help but plague the lad. “Have you lost your way, Pete?” she asked, with an air of innocence.
“Not my way, but myself, woman,” said Pete.
“Lost yourself! Have the lad's wits gone moon-raking, I wonder? Are you witched then, Pete?” she inquired, with vast solemnity.
“Aw, witched enough. Kate——”
“Poor fellow!” sighed Kate. “Did she strike you unknown and sudden?”
“Unknown it was, Kirry, and sudden, too. Listen, though——”
“Aw dear, aw dear! Was it old Mrs. Cowley of the Curragh? Did she turn into a hare? Is it bitten you've been, Pete?”
“Aw, yes, bitten enough. But, Kate——”
“Then it was a dog, it's like. Is it flying from the water you are, Pete?”
“No, but flyingtothe water, woman. Kate, I say——”
“Is it burning they're doing for it?”
“Burning and freezing both. Will you hear me, though? I'm going away—hundreds and thousands of miles away.”
Then from the window came a tone of great awe, uttered with face turned upward as if to the last remaining star.
“Poor boy! Poor boy! it's bitten he is, for sure.”
“Then it's yourself that's bitten me. Kirry——”
There was a little crow of gaiety. “Me? Am I the witch? You called me a fairy in the road this evening.”
“A fairy you are, girl, and a witch too; but listen, now——”
“You said I was an angel, though, at the cowhouse gable; and an angel doesn't bite.”
Then she barked like a dog, and laughed a shrill laugh like a witch, and barked again.
But Pete could bear no more. “Go on, then; go on with your capers! Go on!” he cried, in a voice of reproach. “It's not a heart that's at you at all, girl, but only a stone. You see a man going away from the island——”
“From the island?” Kate gasped.
“Middling down in the mouth, too, and plagued out of his life between the ruck of you,” continued Pete; “but God forgive you all, you can't help it.”
“Did you say you were going out of the island, Pete?”
“Coorse I did; but what's the odds? Africa, Kimberley, the Lord knows where——”
“Kimberley! Not Kimberley, Pete!”
“Kimberley or Timbuctoo, what's it matter to the like of you? A man's coming up in the morning to bid you good-bye before an early sailing, and you're thinking of nothing but your capers and divilments.”
“It's you to know what a girl's thinking, isn't it, Mr. Pete? And why are you flying in my face for a word?”
“Flying? I'm not flying. It's driven I am.”
“Driven, Pete?”
“Driven away by them that's thinking I'm not fit for you. Well, that's true enough, but they shan't be telling me twice.”
“They? Who are they, Pete?”
“What's the odds? Flinging my mother at me, too—poor little mother! And putting the bastard on me, it's like. A respectable man's girl isn't going begging that she need marry a lad without a name.”
There was a sudden ejaculation from the window-sash. “Who dared to say that?”
“No matter.”
“Whoever they are, you can tell them, if it's me they mean, that, name or no name, when I want to marry I'll marry the man I like.”
“If I thought that now, Kitty——”
“As for you, Mr. Pete, that's so ready with your cross words, you can go to your Kimberley. Yes, go, and welcome; and what's more—what's more——”
But the voice of anger, in the half light overhead, broke down suddenly into an inarticulate gurgle.
“Why, what's this?” said Pete in a flurry. “You're not crying though, Kate? Whatever am I saying to you, Kitty, woman? Here, here—bash me on the head for a blockhead and an omathaun.”
And Pete was clambering up the wall by the side of the dairy window.
“Get down, then,” whispered Kate.
Her wrath was gone in a moment, and Pete, being nearer to her now, could see tears of laughter dancing in her eyes.
“Get down, Pete, or I'll shut the window, I will—yes, I will.” And, to show how much she was in earnest in getting out of his reach, she shut up the higher sash and opened the lower one.
“Darling!” cried Pete.
“Hush! What's that?” Kate whispered, and drew back on her knees.
“Is the door of the pig-sty open again?” said Pete.
Kate drew a breath of relief. “It's only somebody snoring,” she said.
“The ould man,” said Pete. “That's all serene! A good ould sheepdog, that snaps more than, he bites, but he's best when he's sleeping—more safer, anyway.”
“What's the good of going away, Pete?” said Kate. “You'd have to make a fortune to satisfy father.”
“Others have done it, Kitty—why shouldn't I? Manx ones too—silver kings and diamond kings, and the Lord knows what. No fear of me! When I come back it's a queen you'll be, woman—my queen, anyway, with pigs and cattle and a girl to wash and do for you.”
“So that's how you'd bribe a poor girl is it? But you'd have to turn religious, or father would never consent.”
“When I come home again, Kitty, I'll be that religious you never seen. I'll be just rolling in it. You'll hear me spaking like the Book of Genesis and Abraham, and his sons, and his cousins; I'll be coming up at night making love to you at the cowhouse door like the Acts of the Apostles.”
“Well, that will be some sort of courting, anyway. But who says I'll be wanting it? Who says I'm willing for you to go away at all with the notion that I must be bound to marry you when you come back?”
“I do,” said Pete stoutly.
“Oh, indeed, sir.”
“Listen. I'll be working like a nigger out yonder, and making my pile, and banking it up, and never seeing nothing but the goold and the girls——”
“My goodness! What do you say?”
“Aw, never fear! I'm a one-woman man, Kate; but loving one is giving me eyes for all. And you'll be waiting for me constant, and never giving a skute of your little eye to them drapers and druggists from Ramsey——”
“Not one of them? Not Jamesie Corrin, even—he's a nice boy, is Jamesie.”
“That dandy-divil with the collar? Hould your capers, woman!”
“Nor young Ballawhaine—Ross Christian, you know?”
“Ross Christian be—well, no; but, honour bright, you'll be saying, 'Peter's coming; I must be thrue!'”
“So I've got my orders, sir, eh? It's all settled then, is it? Hadn't you better fix the wedding-day and take out the banns, now that your hand is in? I have got nothing to do with it, seemingly. Nobody asks me.”
“Whist, woman!” cried Pete. “Don't you hear it?”
A cuckoo was passing over the house and calling.
“It's over the thatch, Kate. 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' Three times! Bravo! Three times is a good Amen. Omen is it? Have it as you like, love.”
The stars had paled out by this time, and the dawn was coming up like a grey vapour from the sea.
“Ugh! the air feels late; I must be going in,” said Kate.
“Only a bit of a draught from the mountains—it's not morning yet,” said Pete.
A bird called from out of the mist somewhat far away.
“It is, though. That's the throstle up the glen,” said Kate.
Another bird answered from the eaves of the house.
“And what's that?” said Pete. “Was it yourself, Kitty? How straight your voice is like the throstle's!”
She hung her head at the sweet praise, but answered tartly, “How people will be talking!”
A dead white light came sweeping over the front of the house, and the trees and the hedges, all quiet until then, began to shudder. Kate shuddered too, and drew the frills closer about her throat. “I'm going, Pete,” she whispered.
“Not yet. It's only a taste of the salt from the sea,” said Pete. “The moon's not out many minutes.”
“Why, you goose, it's been gone these two hours. This isn't Jupiter, where it's moonlight always.”
“Always moonlight in Jubiter, is it?” said Pete. “My goodness! What coorting there must be there!”
A cock crowed from under the hen-roost, the dog barked indoors, and the mare began to stamp in her stall.
“When do you sail, Pete?”
“First tide—seven o'clock.”
“Time to be off, then. Good-bye!”
“Hould hard—a word first.”
“Not a word. I'm going back to bed. See, there's the sun coming up over the mountains.”
“Only a touch of red on the tip of ould Cronky's nose. Listen! Just to keep them dandy-divils from plaguing you, I'll tell Phil to have an eye on you while I'm away.”
“Mr. Christian?”
“Call him Philip, Kate. He's as free as free. No pride at all. Let him take care of you till I come back.”
“I'm shutting the window, Pete!”
“Wait! Something else. Bend down so the ould man won't hear.”
“I can't reach—what is it?”
“Your hand, then; I'll tell it to your hand.”
She hesitated a moment, and then dropped her hand over the window-sill, and he clutched at it and kissed it, and pushed back the white sleeve and ran up the arm with his lips as far as he could climb.
“Another, my girl; take your time, one more—half a one, then.”
She drew her arm back until her hand got up to his hand, and then she said, “What's this? The mole on your finger still, Pete? You called me a witch—now see me charm it away. Listen!—'Ping, ping, prash, Cur yn cadley-jiargan ass my chass.'”
She was uttering the Manx charm in a mock-solemn ululation when a bough snapped in the orchard, and she cried, “What's that?”
“It's Philip. He's waiting under the apple-tree,” said Pete.
“My goodness me!” said Kate, and down went the window-sash.
A moment later it rose again, and there was the beautiful young face in its frame as before, but with the rosy light of the dawn on it.
“Has he been there all the while?” she whispered.
“What matter? It's only Phil.”
“Good-bye! Good luck!” and then the window went down for good.
“Time to go,” said Philip, still in his tall silk hat and his knickerbockers. He had been standing alone among the dead brown fern, the withering gorse, and the hanging brambles, gripping the apple-tree and swallowing the cry that was bubbling up to his throat, but forcing himself to look upon Pete's happiness, which was his own calamity, though it was tearing his heart out, and he could hardly bear it.
The birds were singing by this time, and Pete, going back, sang and whistled with the best of them.